One of the highlights of doing campus Kiruv is the ability to take our students on a journey into the deepest and most meaningful aspects of our nation’s history and essence. I mean that physically, emotionally and spiritually – we take our students to Eretz Yisroel in the summer and Poland in the winter.

Eastern Europe is a place of so much darkness, but gevald it is so full of light, enough to light the soul on fire. While there are those (particularly in the older generation) who insist that we must never go back there, I believe we must take our young people to see and experience the tragedy and triumph of our Zaides and Bubbes so they feel connected to their rich heritage and see how their predecessors heroically responded to the challenges of their time.

Our most recent Poland trip featured the lowest of the lows and the highest of the highs – the darkness and light were, so to speak, ‘b’irvuvya’ mixed together.

We visited the Warsaw cemetery, burial place of some of our greatest leaders, followed by a visit to the hunger and deprivation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

A trip to Treblinka, where nothing exists of the 900,000 Jews exterminated there, was followed by Torah, inspiration and dancing at Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, the greatest Yeshiva of pre war Poland. After visiting the terror of Majdanek, a place largely still intact, we elevated to another reality at the kever of Rav Elimelech of Lizhensk.

But there are two experiences that I especially want to share:
First, on motzai Shabbos, the night before we took our students to visit Auschwitz Birkenau, the students talked to Mr. Leslie Kleinman, who grew up in Satmar, son of a Dayan and who has lived in England since 1946. Leslie told our students of his horrific experiences as a young teenager, seeing his father taken away forever and being transported with his mother and siblings to Auschwitz Birkenau. While his mother and siblings were marched off to the gas chambers, Leslie was instructed to say that he was 17, in order to be placed in a labor group. As time went on, young and lonely Leslie went around seeking out some friends. Yet nobody had the energy to talk or listen, as they were all beaten and starving. So Leslie, then all of 14 years old, turned to Hashem and said, “Hashem, I have no friends in the world. Will You be my friend?” Leslie continued, “I felt Hashem taking me through the rest of the war through liberation.”

It would seem to me that if a person lives their entire life and accomplishes nothing other than only once reaching such a pure level of Bitachon and connection with the Ribbono Shel Olam, to say “Hashem, will you be my friend?” it would be worth it.

Second, while walking through Auschwitz with our students, we were about to stop at Block 10, the house where Dr Mengele performed the horrific medical experiments, we heard singing coming from behind block 11, the execution courtyard. The singing was melodious, otherworldly and beautiful. The students and staff gravitated there as if by some unseen force. We turned into the execution courtyard only to find a group of Israeli Chassidim singing Ani Maamin and other niggunim in a slow and perfect harmony. A crowd of non Jews gathered and in front of them, our students locked arm over shoulder, gently swaying together. Rav Zalman Goldstein of Meor Maryland wrote,”This was surreal. A Chevra of Chassidim singing absolutely haunting old niggunim suddenly began pulsating through Auschwitz. The whole group was pulled there magnetically. The tour guide just forfeited control. And the students just stood there and watched them singing in front of the execution wall. And many students started crying. You could feel them being emotionally pulled toward these singing Chassidim. An intense sense of deep, primal familiarity and identification.” Please see the video below.

It was truly a week in Shamayim and it is incumbent on us to enable our children to have such an experience.

The entire community is invited to a parlor meeting this Thursday at 8 PM at the home of Moshe Botnick, 1567 Salem St. (Albert Area), to benefit Meor Rutgers Jewish Xperience.

Rabbi Meir Goldberg is the director of Meor Rutgers Jewish Xperience.